Abstract:
From an ontological point of view, tourism sites which host World Heritage stamp
have faced an existential crisis; the reality that sustains its monumental significance
gets altered and lost in the face of commercialization. The holistic appearance that
attracts the tourist’s nostalgia is irreparably damaged by the community who struggles
for survival in these sites. However, tourism as a modern cultural phenomenon is
possible only when man develops a generalized interest that catches the gaze of the
tourists who are driven to travel beyond his particular habitat. For those who present a
reality to the tourist must also have a Kantian ‘public sense’ of universal appreciation,
aesthetic judgment and cultural awareness in things that can existentially attract and
excite them. The cosmological sense of appreciation that transcends from government
agencies to community stakeholders, as this paper reviews, not only preserves the
historical and holistic integrity of the site itself, but may advance the tourism industry
which can sustainably promote these sites for the alienated tourists. By reviewing the
empirical evidence through observations and stakeholder interviews in Kandy City
and Galle Dutch Fort in Sri Lanka, where serious site mismanagement issues and
stakeholder interference can be found in disturbing holistic aesthetic integrity that
caters the tourist gaze, this paper suggests that tourism ontology on holistic universals
should be taken into account rather than spatiotemporal particulars such as abstract
individual and political interests of those who struggle in the respective sites.
